"CNET News.com is reporting that in the face of increasing competition in the OS virtualization market VMWare is going to give away its GSX server product for free, in the hope that customers who try it will eventually migrate to the more powerful ESX server. The company recently released
a free VMWare Player which could only run but not create virtual
machines. The company faces competition from rival products such as
SWsoft's Virtuozzo, Mircrosoft's Virtual Server, as well as open source
software like Xen"

Reuters reports that the fifth NTP patent has been rejected.
What does it say about the US Patent office and software patents that
these patents have made it through trials, appeals, etc and only now
has the Patent Office decided they weren't any good in the first place?" From the article: "The
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has sided with BlackBerry portable
e-mail device maker Research in Motion Ltd. by issuing a non-final
rejection of a fifth patent at the center of its legal battle with
patent holding company NTP Inc. The decision means the patent agency
has now issued non-final rejections of all five patents at issue in a
BlackBerry patent-infringement case before a federal judge."

A UK govt report says that greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts
that previously thought. Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global
warming at a rate that is unsustainable. From BBC: The European Union
has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature
of more than two Celsius. That, according to the report, might be too
high, with two degrees being enough to trigger melting of the Greenland
ice sheet.... A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be
enough to cause: * Decreasing crop yields in the developing and
developed world * Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia *
Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification
* Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage * 97% loss of coral
reefs * Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the
polar bear and the walrus * Spread of malaria in Africa and north
America"

It's an interesting article but misses the point entirely that the patents in question should never have been granted nor does it really clarify how the entire patent system in the USA is fundamentally broken.